Drug traffickers and gun-runners compromised our sovereignty in ways the British won’t

Oct 30, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Now that the British Government has officially withdrawn its offer of G$1.6 billion to fund the badly needed and long overdue security reform project in the Guyana Police Force, we, the people, need to make our own assessment of the two distinctly separate announcements purportedly sourced to the two governments to determine who is telling the truth.
According to the BBC, the project was called off after the two countries failed to agree on its management. According to Office of the President, the decision by the UK Government is believed to be linked to the Jagdeo administration’s refusal to permit training of British Special Forces in Guyana using live firing in a hinterland community on the western border with Brazil and Venezuela.
Other than issuing a blanket statement that the two countries failed to agree on the management of the project, the British have not offered any details and this then begs the next most obvious question: What aspect of the management of the project did the British find so untenable that they would withdraw their generous offer rather than continue working to find some other avenue through which they could still accomplish their goal of helping Guyana?
Because at the end of the day, while the Guyana Government may want us to feel the decision hinged on the issue of protecting Guyana’s sovereignty, the Guyana Police Force still needs overhauling to make it professionally competent to deal with myriad crimes in Guyana, including drug smuggling, money laundering, and corruption in government. And in an era when technology is being heavily relied on to fight modern-day crimes, this is an area where training of our cops cannot be overemphasised.
While we await a more detailed statement from the British Embassy on the management hiccups its Government encountered with the Guyana Government on the project, we are left to work with slightly more details from Guyana. “The decision by the UK Government is believed to be linked to the (Jagdeo) administration’s refusal to permit training of British Special Forces in Guyana using live firing in a hinterland community on the western border with Brazil and Venezuela,” was what OP said and my immediate interpretation of that explanation was that the British wanted a quid pro quo: in exchange for their security sector reform aid to Guyana, the British would like to use a part of Guyana’s remote hinterland to conduct training exercises for their Special Forces, using live ammunition. If this is the case, then, as a matter of pure principle, I think it is a judgment call the Jagdeo administration is entitled to make.
For there are countries that are hosts to foreign security forces for a variety of reasons, but such arrangements are reached between governments based on thorough discussions about the purpose and the privileges extended to the visiting forces. In Colombia, for example, US military personnel are stationed there and the official reason given for this is the need for assistance in tracking and thwarting narco-traffickers and gun-runners. Critics of the move claim it is politically constructed to defend Colombia and other US-friendly countries in the region against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and those armed militias supportive of his ideological pursuits in the region.
But while it is up to the Jagdeo administration to decide on letting British security personnel train in Guyana – live ammunitions or no live ammunitions – it is somewhat hypocritical of the administration to be using sovereignty as the cover excuse, knowing full well Guyana’s sovereignty has long been compromised by illicit drug traffickers and gun runners who have taken full advantage of our porous borders and a lax law enforcement system.
These people are doing more harm to Guyana’s sovereignty than any British personnel can do with their training in our hinterland. And that’s just my opinion as a Guyanese who wonders everyday what Government is doing to really protect not only Guyana’s sovereignty, but the rights of the people of Guyana.
Guyana’s sovereignty has also been compromised when the Jagdeo administration said absolutely nothing in response to President Chavez’s assertion that Guyana cannot undertake any ‘sensitive projects’ in our North West region without first consulting him. Is there a Guyanese out there who doesn’t believe that Venezuela poses a  greater threat to our sovereignty than the British?
I also find implausible, Government’s use of the word ‘community’ in the cover excuse as if to imply the British’s use of live ammunitions in training would be endangering the lives of residents in or around any community in the hinterland. Are the British this dumb to use live ammunition in a community filled with residents? When members of the GDF are on live ammunitions training in our hinterland, don’t they take into consideration residents in neighbouring communities?
And if they don’t use live ammunitions in training, then how will they know if or how their weapons will work in real life dangers? There are swaths of unoccupied land that could be used for this live ammunitions training purpose.
So, could it be possible, given the ideological nature of the political animal we call the PPP and its creature, the Jagdeo administration, that they don’t want the British stationing security forces in Guyana?
Could it also be possible that the PPP remembers its history with British soldiers in then British Guiana during the politically-inspired racial ‘disturbances’ of the early 60s’ that led to the ouster of the PPP through a coalition of the PNC and UF?
But with drug traffickers and gun-runners taking advantage of Guyana’s porous borders, and with the Takutu Bridge officially opened to vehicular traffic between Brazil and Guyana, wouldn’t the presence of British police officers, along with the presence of Guyana’s army and police personnel, go a long way toward assuring a sense of safety and security in Guyana’s south western border shared by Brazil and Venezuela?
Or is it a case where the administration does not want help in stopping the flow of illicit drugs and guns across our porous borders?
The bottom line in this Guyana-Britain brouhaha is this: partisan and petty politics aside, the Guyana’s Police Force needs overhauling, including a change in hiring methods, training methods, promoting methods, the acquisition of modernized crime detection and prevention equipment, a fleet of working rapid response vehicles, a SWAT team, and a remuneration package designed to attract and retain the best cops Guyana can produce.
Now, since Government does not have the money for those needs and appears to have baulked at the British using our soil to train their security personnel in exchange for British security reform aid, then we have to weigh our priorities and options and live with the consequences, and right now we have settled for protecting our so-called sovereignty while leaving our police force unreformed.
Emile Mervin

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